YANN GAVINELLI
Today, we have the opportunity to talk with Yann, one of the founders of the association. Involved in a project in the Marquesas Islands, he shares his experience and vision on the current seed issue.
"It is urgent to place people and nature at the heart of our concerns, and the economy at their service. To persist in maintaining unlimited profit and indefinite growth as the foundation of the world order is totally suicidal. "Pierre Rabhi
- Hello Yann, and thank you for your time. Can you first tell us who you are? introduce yourself in a few words, your aspirations, your journey and how you came to create your association?
I have spent my life travelling with the aim of discovering other cultures and ways of life. I wanted to broaden my understanding of the world and gain personal enrichment from it. In the course of my meetings I have noticed that people who exploit their environment with intelligence live in harmony. By having a knowledge of plants and the natural resources at their disposal, they achieve food self-sufficiency and a healthy and serene comfort of life. By living in harmony with nature, they build social, cultural and economic cohesion in which everyone finds their place. The result is a quality of life that is beneficial in every respect. This way of living in symbiosis with nature seduced me and I therefore learned from the contact with small farmers during my travels in Africa, the Indian Ocean and the South Pacific. Then I wanted to apply my knowledge and share and transmit it. So I created an association with my brother, to perfect our knowledge while sharing our experience through our website. Little by little we have been contacted by various organizations and associations around the world, to provide them with our help and share our knowledge. As a result, I became a trainer in food and economic autonomy. This means that I teach people to practice ecological family farming; to be as self-sufficient as possible in terms of food and energy, and to process and use the products from our environment for our personal comfort and to develop a so-called subsistence economy."
Does it mean to you that people who develop agricultural plans without having been immersed in this world are excommunicated from the peasant reality and therefore that the scope of their actions explain food insufficiency? A word also on the speculations and price volatility orchestrated by certain groups, certain banks?
In fact, we must be aware that conventional agriculture, the very one that exploits very large areas of land, practices monoculture. This activity generates very little employment, and is also harmful to the environment. It is these parameters that are at the heart of the problem of food self-sufficiency. It is this agriculture that supplies the global food chain (agro-industry). In the world market, it produces only 30% of food, and most of it is exported. Countries are obliged to import food (rice, flour, dairy products, etc.). If a country's economic borders close, famine will strike in the days to come! In Europe, since local production is no longer supported by the states, food autonomy is decreasing. Food dependence benefits multinationals, banks and speculators. And the problem of hunger in the world persists and worsens.
A word about the Green Revolution? What do you think of that? Is this revolution bearing fruit?
The Green Revolution has certainly contributed to a collective awareness of the importance of moving to a more ecological agriculture. The problem is that so-called organic agriculture is practiced in a commercial way. No, the real revolution is now developing, with all the actors contributing to food sovereignty by practicing agro-ecology. In France, economic crises have impoverished the population, and the austerity policy we are undergoing is pushing more and more people to cultivate their vegetable garden. Some create shared gardens, others join forces to buy land and become farmers or live in groups, a movement in which everyone contributes to the well-being not of the individual but of the community.
. There is a real change in social behaviour, eating habits, lifestyle and relationships with nature. All over the world, family farming generates employment. In Burkina Faso, women's and youth groups are forming to practice family farming that serves villages. The profits are used to build a school, dig a well, etc. This develops a local economy and social cohesion. In Costa Rica, family agro-ecology is at the heart of economic policy and ensures food sovereignty that respects people and the land. By adopting family farm management, people are learning to live with their environment again. They harmonize with nature, they derive all its benefits - food, economic, health, social cohesion, sustainable development - they regain a quality of life imbued with cultural identity. Human beings are part of the living world, they have the right to enjoy it and the duty to ensure its sustainability."
We know that seeds are part of food, nutritional, environmental, economic and social issues? can these issues be combined together? The problem of seeds also raises the problem of the right to sovereignty, can you tell us more about it? For you, what is the major problem facing farmers with regard to seeds? In your experience, are farmers reluctant to use improved seeds? If so, why? Here in Fance, farmers are not allowed to reproduce most industrial seeds, with the exception of about twenty species... To market or even exchange a seed or plant free of charge, the variety to which they belong must be included in the common catalogue? a reproducibility and therefore standardised? Do you have the same problem in the Marquesas Islands?
Do farmer seeds adapt to all types of soils and promote interactions with other plants? Traditional seeds are unstable, so how can we maintain the heritability of cultivated plants?
1 Seeds are indeed the key to food sovereignty. They represent the wealth of peoples because they provide economic, social, cultural, food, environmental and medicinal well-being. They guarantee an identity specific to each people and provide autonomy and independence from multinationals that tend to standardize the individual by selling him the same food, medicinal and other products, which kills this identity. Farmers are forced to buy their seeds from government-approved suppliers.
The problem is that these suppliers produce hybrid seeds and GMOs *( 1). They are not reproducible and are harmful to biodiversity;
These seeds, whose DNA is tampered with, go through pollinating insects to contaminate unmanipulated varieties. Since the emergence of agriculture, farmers have created varieties adapted to their local environment. They are productive, disease resistant, low water consuming and rich in nutrients. Large state-approved seed companies therefore require the purchase of seeds for each new crop and sell their fertilizers and pesticides to ensure good production. It's a well-oiled business! To produce viable seeds, only farmers can be effective because they work at the place of production taking into account the soil, climate and local environment.
In some African countries, initiatives have yielded positive results such as - the mobilization of extension services for seed promotion - a multi-stakeholder platform to foster communication and demand - school fields for better seed use. Could this be applicable to the Marquesas Islands?
Extension services to promote local seeds would obviously have a positive effect. In the Marquesas Islands, with the support of the Taiohae commune, we are setting up this type of project. The observation is that the population reacts very positively.
In addition to the production of local seeds, we offer agricultural training and welcome schools and agricultural training centres into our structure. There is a strong demand for the population as a whole. In addition, the Ministry of Health has already set up a demonstration vegetable garden, accessible to the public, on a small scale and according to their skills.
Take the case of the Marquesas Islands:
we know that when the first inhabitants arrived, the flora was not sufficient to feed the populations. These islands are too far from any continent to be provided with food plants. It is therefore men who, over time, have imported seeds to ensure an effective nutritional food pallet. They have therefore created a food biodiversity that has allowed them to live independently in good health.
In Third World countries, global organizations have still not succeeded in curbing hunger and water shortages, unlike the practice of family agro-ecology. With regard to the exchange and/or sale of seeds, it should be noted that the law only prohibits the naming of these seeds with the same name as that used by seed companies and which are listed in the catalogue. We have every right to sell tomato seeds by giving them a different name and as long as the variety is not genetically identified. Because the big seed companies are trying to appropriate the molecules of such and such plants. Hence the interest in safeguarding local varieties. In Togo, large-scale farms are responsible for deforestation and expropriation of populations. Today, family agro-ecology allows populations to re-enrich their environmental heritage. They are recovering a rich biodiversity, gradually containing water shortage problems, and regaining a local economy that benefits everyone. Plants are living beings, just like humans, they possess a DNA that is their heritability. It is their basic software and over time and environmental conditions, they evolve to become more resistant and more efficient. This is the natural principle of evolution. Small farmers who respect natural cycles without changing the DNA of plants only give a boost to the plants they grow. Large seed companies, on the other hand, genetically manipulate plants to satisfy needs without taking into account natural cycles. They do not take into account the specific environmental conditions of each region of the world. They sell seeds produced in a sterile environment to grow them in Africa as well as in India, for example. This cannot work because it is contrary to these countries' own natural environmental cycles. Farmers have less and less confidence in seeds improved by scientists who do not take these principles into account. In the Marquesas Islands, we are facing a strong demand from small farmers for a return to peasant seeds. Our project to create a local seed production unit and a seed bank is very welcome. There is a real awareness of the importance of having reproducible seeds, locally adapted, healthy for consumption and for the environment, of practising agriculture that respects the cycles of life, and thus, of regaining sovereignty.
Finally, the last word, advice, what is your philosophy of life based on?
As we travel, we become aware of global problems related to food, access to health, deforestation and pollution caused by human activities. The worst thing is to note that in the "rich" and so-called "developed" countries, these problems are just as prevalent. When I stopped in France in 2006, I was confronted with unemployment and problems of access to land and housing. So my brother and I naturally made the decision to get together to rent a house with land and produce our own food - fruit and vegetables. The idea is that what we can't buy, we can produce. It also allows us to have access to healthy food and therefore to maintain our good health. When we noticed the problems related to access and seed production, we decided to produce our own seeds. And since we were unemployed, we decided to create an association to stay socially connected on the one hand and to share our experiences with the public on the other. This has made us feel useful, "existing", and the pleasure of sharing and receiving recognition from others is highly rewarding. I am not in the habit of giving advice, as it is generally disturbing and poorly received. On the other hand, by setting an example, people are naturally interested and getting closer to you. What I can say is that unity is strength; it is by sharing our experiences, our knowledge and our knowledge that we can improve our living conditions. This is how humanity was built....
Thank you Yann for this interview, for this real involvement but especially for this sharing... Personally, I would say that Yann is still one who has always responded favourably to my requests despite his demanding work....Beautiful communication, beautiful sharing, beautiful soul... Thank you for all this.
REMINDER OF FOOD SOVEREIGNTY
These rights, when respected, ensure that people come before profits and that small farmers take their rightful place in food production and distribution systems.
SUPP. INFO
1 Hybrid seeds are a type of farm-saved seeds resulting from crossbreeding of so-called "pure line" varieties that offer the complementary advantages of the two crossed specimens (greater resistance to drought, chemical inputs, higher yields, etc.). But the properties resulting from the crossing disappear when they are reused. This method of selection accelerates even more the phenomenon of genetic erosion... The last born are the GMO seeds which open the way to the patenting of living organisms, we do not simply cross them, we introduce the genes of another organism (not necessarily vegetal) so that plants grow without water... These GMOs, flanked by a flood of petroleum-based chemical inputs, do not tolerate diversity well and drastically reduce the number of cultivable varieties;
FIND THE NEWS OF YANN AND ADAAE
The youtube channel of the associations ADAAE-ASE and ADAAE Vahakekua
ADAAE -ASE is an association that works for food self-sufficiency and has already been involved in many projects.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-lLb3_jzy4fBfjISIFNmZQ?view_as=subscriber
FB :https://www.facebook.com/adaaeyann/
WEB : http://www.adaa-ase.com/
FOR MORE INFORMATION
The right to seeds is at the heart of the draft United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Farmers and Other Persons Working in Rural Areas. Many countries in the South are now coveted by multinational seed and chemical companies. The latter are lobbying to change legislation in their favour in developing countries. In view of this situation, it is urgent to recognize and secure the right to seeds by giving it the value of a human right. This right, initially customary, is beginning to be formally recognized. But the current rules are infinitely less protective for farmers than the laws on intellectual property rights or seed marketing, which favour powerful multinational seed companies.
The growing promotion of private investment in agriculture to supposedly combat poverty is another Trojan horse of the seed industry. These include actions dedicated to Africa such as the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, launched in 2008 by the G8 countries, and Grow Africa. These initiatives are based on investment projects carried out mainly by multinationals.
Some of them, such as Monsanto, DuPond, Syngenta and Limagrain, dominate the seed sector. GMO seeds, derived from the world of biotechnology research, are subject to widespread patenting and cannot be planted a second time under penalty of heavy fines. According to FAO, 75% of the varieties grown have disappeared in a century. While diversity made it possible to avoid putting all eggs in the same basket, to limit losses in the event of disease, climate change or insect invasion, older varieties also had important nutritional qualities. The appropriation of peasant knowledge by the seed industry therefore constitutes both an environmental and health risk, as well as a threat to food sovereignty.
https://www.bastamag.net/Les-semences-et-les-plantes-propriete-exclusive-de-l-agro-industrie
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnasEz1SVxE
http://www.alimenterre.org/ressource/fiche-pedagogique-film-guerre-graines